counting leaf coaches

Coach #2: Conn Smythe, seen here in spats in 1937, was the Leafs’ second coach after they transformed from St. Patricks in 1927. (Photo: Courtesy of the Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection)

Lots of numbers flying around today with the announcement that Mike Babcock is taking over as head coach of the Toronto Maple Leafs, from one (number of Stanley Cups Babcock has won) to ten (years he was in Detroit) to 50,000,000 (non-Canadian dollars Toronto will reportedly be paying him over the course of the next years).

The number 30 has been prominent, too, in the mix, notably from the Leafs themselves, who at 11:22 a.m. this morning took to Twitter to make welcome “the 30th head coach in club history.”

Can you blame everybody else, press and public alike, for taking the team’s word for it — even though it’s wrong?

Whether the Leafs know it or not, Mike Babcock is the 31st man to coach the team.

That’s going back to the winter of 1927, when Conn Smythe transformed the St. Patricks into Maple Leafs midway through the NHL season and counting all the way through to, well, now. Along the way, the coaches have included many former playing greats (from Hap Day to George Armstrong) along with enduring bench legends (Dick Irvin) and those who’ve been unfortunate to have wear the word interim next to their job description (Peter Horachek). A couple (King Clancy and Punch Imlach) have had more than one go at the job. Any way you tally them all (try it yourself here), the number is 31.

Could just be a simple oversight handed down over time. I can’t say for certain whom the Leafs and everybody else are leaving out of their calculations, but my guess is that it’s the man with the briefest of Leaf leaderships — Dick Duff, who steered the team for just two (losing) games in 1980, post-Floyd Smith, pre-Punch Imlach.

Could be, I suppose, that it’s a matter of mercy: maybe the team believes that Duf, another Leaf great as a player, only stepped up to fill a gap that needed filling, and that his coaching days (and their .000 winning percentage) deserve to be excused from all our memories.

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From Greystone Books. Available in bookstores in Canada and the United States. 2014 Hockey Book of the Year, as per www.hockeybookreviews.com. "Funny, smart, unlike any hockey book I've read," Dave Bidini has said; "Joycean," Charles Foran called it. "It’s rare to find a book that makes me proud to be Canadian," is what Michael Winter wrote: "A funny, myth-busting, life-loving read."

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poem

Thankful that I never
played against
Wayne Gretzky
in an NHL playoff series;
I probably would have had to break his hand.

I would not have wanted to injure Gretzky, mind you;
I loved the guy.
I never touched him on the ice
in a regular season game.
I had too much respect
for how he played
and how he carried himself.

But I can say without question
I would have tried to hurt him
if we had been matched up
in the playoffs.
In my mind,
there are no friends
in a playoff series

I’m not talking about
elbowing someone in the head
or going after someone’s knees.
I’m talking about a strategic slash.
To me, slashing someone’s hand or breaking someone’s fingers was nothing.
It was part of the game.

Broken hands heal.
Fingers heal.
The pain that comes from losing does not.